THE SHEPHERD'S SHIFT

How a nightclub bouncer became the bouncer of souls

- BY PHILIP GEORGE/Tuscany

It is almost impossible to imagine Jorge Mario Bergoglio—Pope Francis—standing tall at the velvet rope of a Buenos Aires nightclub in the 1960s, deciding who merited entry and who did not. And yet, that is precisely what he did. Long before he became spiritual shepherd to more than a billion Catholics, he was quite literally a bouncer—clad not in corduroy but in humility—studying theology by day and gently corralling revellers by night. I like to think he never actually turned anyone away. More likely, he whispered to the doorman, “Let them in. They need this as much as confession.”

That experience never left him. As Pope, he cast open the Church's doors—both literal and metaphorical—with that same laid-back conviction. In his first weeks in Rome, he refused the papal apartments; instead, he lived in the guest house, the Casa Santa Marta, choosing community over ceremony. He rode in a battered Ford Focus, not a bulletproof limousine. When he stepped onto St Peter's balcony for the first time in March 2013, he did not declaim policy; he bowed and asked for prayers with the simple greeting buonasera in beautiful Italian.

A “PIANO, PIANO” PAPACY

Francis loved to say “piano, piano” (Italian for slowly, slowly), reminding the world that change does not need a bulldozer’s might, but a gentle hand on the rudder. It is a motto he learned not from the red tape of the Vatican secretariat but from the crowded shanty towns of Argentina, where he rode the night buses into the poorest barrios, blending into the ordinary, listening rather than pontificating. A friend, Alicia, once spotted him on a local bus, exchanging jokes with migrants, no entourage in sight. That humility and that unbreakable spirit defined his style.